Man hopes hoarding ordinance will speed up help

David Weede holds his dog, Chloe, in the living room of his home, Monday, April 14, 2014, in Houston. Holes in the cushions of his couch bleed feathers, where rats, from a hoarding neighbor, came into his home and caused damage. For nearly eight years, Weede called city officials looking for someone to help clean-up his neighborâÄôs townhome, where hundreds of birds, dogs and cats darted down feces-caked goat paths between piles of wholesale goods and rotting food. Finally, about a year ago, an animal abuse intervention helped get authorities into the home and gave them leverage to convince the homeowner to clean up. ( Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle )

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff

David Weede has not invited anyone to his house for more than a year because of the nose-stinging smell and the holes that rats have chewed through his walls and couch pillows.

For nearly eight years, Weede called city officials, looking for someone, anyone, to help clean up his next-door neighbors' townhome.

"The city did nothing," he said. "I went to the homeowners association, but they couldn't do anything because their hands were pretty much tied."

Now, he hopes City Council will pass an anti-hoarding ordinance at its meeting Wednesday, so others do not have to wait so long for help.

City officials and police officers supportive of the anti-hoarding proposal say that existing health and building codes do not give them clear authority or direction on what to do when the conditions created by an individual begins to affect neighbors' safety.

Some mental health experts and people diagnosed with hoarding disorder worry the ordinance would criminalize a mental illness.

"If local laws needed to be changed to address emerging public health issues, it makes perfect sense to update the laws, but why single out hoarding disorder?" said Jeff Szymanski, executive director of the Boston-based International OCD Foundation, which includes the Hoarding Center.

A separate disorder

Last year, the American Psychiatric Association listed hoarding as a separate disorder in the update to its diagnostic manual. Research has shown that the brains of people with the disorder respond differently when asked to throw away items others may consider trash, but has yet to pinpoint a specific cause.

Trauma from a great loss often triggers an escalation in hoarding behaviors, said Randy Frost, one of the nation's leading researchers treating and studying the disorder. An estimated 2 percent of Americans have the disorder, he said, although it often is most noticeable among the elderly because they have had longer to accumulate things and people are more likely to check on them than other adults.

Spurred by a growing public recognition of hoarding, in part, because of reality television shows, local governments have begun seeking ways to manage the sometimes hazardous messes created by people with the disorder or others who simply are unclean. Dozens of cities have created task forces to coordinate mental health interventions and clean-ups.

"There's a clear trade off here," Frost said. "The rights of everyone need to be protected in these situations. The real question is what is going to effectively do that?"

Houston's proposed ordinance, which would not apply to single-family homes, would create fines, clarify when police could enter a property with a warrant and refer violators to social services.

Judi, a recovering hoarder, called the city's proposal "scary."

"Everybody wants to help and everybody's idea of helping is cleaning up," she said. "That actually is more traumatizing. I just hope that the city will be careful and be kind and tread lightly. It's just a baffling issue."

Judi, who asked that last name not be used, said it was difficult for her friends and family to understand why she could not simply throw away the papers, clothes and empty plastic bottles piled in her Houston apartment. One friend did not understand why Judi became so angry and upset when she returned home from a trip to find that her pet sitter had cleaned her kitchen.

Eventually, she came to realize she had a problem.

"I had a very cluttered house, but I had thought it was because it was a small 500-square-foot apartment," said the 42-year-old woman, who now is seeking a computer programming degree in Austin. "I knew something was wrong."

Despite years of therapy, it was not until psychiatrists began to look at hoarding as the disorder and not the symptom that Judi began to get some answers. These days, she said, she is slowing her demise, no longer acquiring things but still having difficulty getting rid of stuff.

When Weede bought his two-story townhome 17 years ago off a quiet cul-de-sac near Sharpstown, he said he had no clue about the living conditions of his new neighbors.

"At first, they were very quiet. I didn't see anything going on," Weede said. "We had started seeing more insects. We started seeing rat activity. That's when we started noticing a lot of trash on the patio. A few years later, they asked me to take care of their birds and dogs while they were gone on vacation."

He said he had to wear a bandana over his nose and mouth because the smell was so strong. He saw hundreds of cockatiels and parakeets crowded in dirty cages. The only way to move through the home was down narrow paths between piles of rotting food and household goods, some of which were spilling out of cardboard cartons. Caked on the carpet were feces mixed with dog and bird feed.

As rats from next door chewed through his walls, lamps, furniture and food, Weede started delaying his daily return home. He slept during the day because he could not sleep with rats crawling under his bed. He ate out more because he could not keep food safe. Once, he stopped cooking mid-recipe when he noticed the chili powder was moving. Weevils had moved in.

"I wanted out of here, but where would I go? My house is paid for," he said. "To go through all of that because of somebody else's carelessness."

It was not until about a year ago that Weede was able to get authorities into his neighbor's home. And then it was about the animals' safety.

The immediate danger to the animals gave authorities cause to forcibly enter and the leverage to convince the remaining homeowner - her husband had died - to consent to cleaning the 1,600-square-foot townhome. All the materials removed from the home, including appliances, filled a 30-cubic-yard trash bin six times.

Exterminators sprayed, laid down poison and traps throughout the gutted property. For the next six months, Weede would collect at least four dead rats each day from the shared front yard.

He replaced all the carpet in his home with wood flooring, and is looking for a fabric to recover throw pillows that spit out feathers whenever his puppy leaps on them.

"The smell, I think, it's permeated. I don't know that I'll get rid of it," Weede said. "As long as I'm not infested, I'm grateful."

Jayme Fraser covers government and growth in Katy and Fort Bend. She has worked at the Houston Chronicle since 2012, writing about city government, religion, housing and homelessness. Before coming to Texas, she reported on state and tribal governments, social services, higher education and other topics at dailies throughout the Northwest.